SUPRA VIRES

CHAPTER TEN: FORMER RELATIONSHIP

5th year

"Ginny, for once you're in the right place at the right time," Malfoy said happily, turning his back rudely to the Fat Lady. "That old toad wouldn't let me in..." he complained, pointing towards the portrait.

"Shhh," the girl whispered. "Do you want her to escape from the painting?" Ginny looked at the tall boy with frightened eyes. Draco rarely hung around the seventh floor, so she eyed him warily.

" I don't really care about her," the boy said loudly, so that the Fat Lady could hear. She inhaled loudly and disappeared from the picture after a while, going to her friend as usual.

"Great, I won't go into the room now," Ginny growled at him with reluctance. She was always intrigued by how an aristocrat like Draco could alienate people in just a few seconds.

"You'll sleep in the corridor then," Malfoy shrugged, "as a last resort, I can take you to my quarters in the dungeons, but you know, it's terribly cold there," he added with an innocent wink.

"If that's all you wanted to tell me, you're pathetic," Ginny said, narrowing her eyes. She was also in a bad mood, and talking to him would surely only make it worse, so she decided to go to Violet's portrait and politely ask the Fat Lady to come back.

"No... Be quiet, or Potter or Ron will see us," Draco successfully calmed down the girl. "I really want to talk."

"Fine," she agreed, pushing the boy into the cupboard to her left, where Filtch illegally kept torture devices once used on naughty students in the dungeons.

"I thought Dumbledore told him to get rid of it," Draco said, looking around the room reluctantly. It was slightly larger than an ordinary closet for useless brooms, and the boy wondered how it was possible that piles of devices could fit in such a small place.

"Because he told him to..." Ginny said, just as reluctantly. "Apparently he thinks it's better to keep everything just in case." Here the girl looked at the stocks which, hearing the students' voices, jumped up excitedly, ready to punish all the naughty ones. The girl shuddered involuntarily, moving closer to the door. "What did you want?" she asked, looking away from the stocks to Malfoy as she remembered why he was sitting in the cupboard.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to Potter, but..."

"If you wanted to talk to him, I'll call him," Ginny interrupted, frowning. She was hoping that the boy had come to her when he popped out to talk to Harry. "Since when did you become so close?"

"You know, we have to hide our relationship," Draco said, raising his eyebrows when he suddenly realized how stupid thing he has just said.

The girl's lips began to quiver and she narrowed her eyes. She couldn't forget how, not so long ago, she and the boy met secretly. At first it was just a casual acquaintance, but then Ginny started to feel something more. It was then that he broke off all contact with her, without providing an answer as to why he was doing it. It was just a simple affection, not love, but it was enough for her to suffer from the loss of acquaintance.

"Sorry," the boy apologized. Ginny knew how much effort he put into that one word, even for a moment she thought she saw something more than mockery in his eyes, maybe even pain? However, immediately afterwards he turned around again, looking around the room.

"The thing is..." he began hesitantly. He bent down and picked up the magic handcuffs. It was a device not much different from the ones used by Muggle policemen when trying to incapacitate a person, but it was certainly not easy to get rid of them. Draco smiled. "That you have to convince Potter not to go to Hogsmeade tomorrow."